“The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are a...”

“When we look ahead to 2018, we should expect big steps forward in science to come once again from changes in style rather than from marginal improvements in technology.”

“We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year-olds by making them waste the best years of their lives preparing for examinations.”

“The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who inve...”

“It is our task, both in science and in society at large, to prove the conventional wisdom wrong and to make our unpredictable dreams come true”

“The essential fact which emerges ... is that the three smallest and most active reservoirs ( of carbon in the global carbon cycle), the atmosphere, the plants and the soil, are all of roughly the s...”

“Society was the only threat to the sanctity of selfhood: an unpatroned library was an orderly library.”

“If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle. ”

“A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.”

“Rich people do not work for money, they are doing what they like to do”

“Why do we need money beyond a point? If we are free of ill health, enmity, and debt, is that not enough? Too much money only leads to less peace.”

“Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!”